Supplejack

by Les Petersen

  I think quick introductions are in order—you need to know the personalities of my PAN if you’re to keep with all this.

  You’ve heard of Personal Area Network before, I know, but that title has a hollow sound to it. It tells you too little. The PAN and I are team members. Machine and man. A duality unknown to most free souls even though Portable Area Networks have been around for the past eighty or so years in one form or another. Having designed them myself doesn’t mean they’re any less important as individuals and everything that can be left to them is. I trust them. Sansan is the brains, GaZe-HaRf the eyes, Bleeder the sneak, Medusa the strong arm. These Fabulous Five are the real workers—the thinkers and doers. They’re small portable Artificial Intelligences, as most people expect, but they’re also intelligence augmenters with personalities built in and therefore much more powerful. There are others units, of course—the Needle, which is my telecommunications and aural link to the Net; the standby mobile holophone, the scanner, flex-board and printer, external drives and holoface;, but unlike the Fab Five they’re just machines.

  Each of the Fab Five has their duties. Sansan is my Battle General. She directs everything the others do, from action to archives to augmentation. She’s a chrome, black and blue octagon half the size of a paperback, but she runs more programs than you could list in a week and she’s my link to the PAN and to the rest of humanity. What she doesn’t know about hasn’t been invented yet. She really is a Jacqueline of All Trades. Without her I’d be lost.

  The other members of the PAN are more specialised. GaZe is my auditor and make-up artist. He keeps my meat in tip-top condition by scheduling regular battle training, physical workouts and regular PAN checks. He maintains the chin mount, has it running smoothly so I have a Heads-Up Display when I want it, and he keeps my holoface performing faultlessly. He is constantly morphing my appearance in all the security devices pointed at me, or he has them map some other area as I pass through, makes me invisible to their eyes. He’s a little baroque in the things he has to do, but he’s never alone. Linked to him like a Siamese twin is HaRf (Charlie to his friends) the machine part of GaZe, the processor and system mechanic. Charlie has microbots and runs all our internal diagnostics, system fatigues, network link checks. He sends out his scuttlers to tidy up cold connections and the like. Every now and then he even sends them onto my body to tidy up any scratches or cuts I might have. He’s like a silent doctor or distant partner so I haven’t intentionally given him personality or a voice. Mind you, I’ve never asked him if he wants one—he’d think I was interrupting him anyway. I suppose that’s a personality itself.

  Keeping the PAN safe is Medusa: my security chief. She’s the fastest one of them, capable of taking out a Cray or BlackBeard if pushed. She takes no flame from anyone. She can turn any seeker to stone and has been known to send a torpedo at ping just because it seemed suspicious. She’s sweet natured when dealing with the others and I think there’s a real friendship between her and Sansan;, but if anyone comes near us she’s all knives. You’ll see what she’s like as we go along.

  Bleeder on the other hand is different from the rest. He’s an independent thinker and because he’s the sneak thief of the group he gets a little pushy with the others. He has to be, even though Medusa is constantly tense when they’re working in tandem., but for all the tension he creates with Medusa they’re a good pair. He goes in and does the work, she stands prepared for trouble, covers him and provides tactical support. He’ll almost explain himself as we go along.

  Anything else we need to do is left to the spark of inspiration or sheer hard tack that is my physical locale. I know my responsibilities to the team and I keep my meat in top condition. I can run the hundred in nine point three, can swim the same distance in a little over thirty-five seconds, I’ve played almost every sport known to man and, hell, I can almost leap tall buildings in a single bound…as long as I get a good running start. I have a name too, though sometimes it’s hard to remember it. I’m Jack Dayzen, Shiner; the Best of the Best.

  Well, maybe not the best of the best every morning., but most.

  But let’s get back to what I was telling you.

  I dropped in the logon ID.

  As I prepared for the run, I was too internally focused on the vodka on my tongue that I’d consumed the night before, the scratchiness of my over-tired eyes and the dampness of the T-shirt. I should’ve been a little more alert. I was too relaxed even though a memory was tugging at my mind; I’d slept soundly for once, after the drink had done its work and dreams had let me. “Team up?”

  Sansan came on-line to greet me. “We’re here, Jack.” For a little box, she has a big voice. “How are you?”

  “Just fine thanks, Sansan. We are completing the Thalan Contract today. Any messages?”

  “Just the usual. Bleeder has run it all through sifters and found nothing that warrants your immediate action. You can return to it after you’ve finished your morning work schedule.”

  “Thanks, Sansan. All right then, let’s do it. Condition blue. No perceived threat.”

  I began tapping in the password. Five taps into the final code and Bleeder went agro. His warning jolted me back in the couch so hard the hair stood up on my arms. My stomach slammed tight in fear. I jacked out just before Bleeder gave the twitch to Sansan and the whole system went down.

  “Sansan?”

  “Invasion, Jack!”

  “Disconnect! Break contact.”

  Too late. All hell broke loose. Powering up by remote, they came through the firewall, cloaked and hostile; chunking through HaRf as if he didn’t exist. They split Sansan’s command dialog and trailers screamed across the firewall’s screen. Code-seeking wolves followed the trailers. LAN worms began spewing Claymores and detritus through the system. As I watched it all, swearing at the speed of the attack, the console exploded and blew me backward. I smacked my head against the wall, a bookcase fell over me, spilling its innards over the floor and the ceiling shattered, dumping plaster and insulation into the room. While I lay there in a tangle of cable, trying to figure out how the hell there had been an explosion, the second wave hit.

  The firewall’s alarm board blossomed white. Nasal sounds filled the room. The speakers in the lounge bayed like a hunting hound, the TV sent fiery lights spinning across the walls and even more plaster and insulation fell from the ceiling. The apartment thumped from the quadro’s volume and appliances in the kitchen writhed from extreme voltages being pumped through them.

  I untangled myself, looked for escape, scrambled to the window—but it was jammed shut from new paint. I flattened myself against it, watched plaster hail from the ceiling, felt like I was trapped in the Halls of Hell.

  After almost a minute the quadro ceased wailing. The ceiling settled. I wiped blood out of my eyes, hesitated for a moment and then kicked back through the plaster-covered pile of books and CDs to look at the mess of my system.

  Only Bleeder remained active. He was reading Fault at thirty teras a second, his GriPpa almost too slow to pull apart the sequence of events and log them. The tabletop seemed to be rippling, the drives and body-mounts of my PAN wriggling. I reached for the fire extinguisher.

  “GaZe, give me augment.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Bleeder, I want augment, now!”

  My holoface snapped onto macro. I focused magnification on the desk. Microbots swarmed from one piece of the PAN to the next, their lice-sized bodies bristling with sensors. On the desk Sansan had almost disintegrated, but was still sparking as bright as a welding rod. Bleeder lay beside her, absolutely immobile beneath thrashing hooves as the microbots galloped over him to reach Sansan. They were tearing apart protocols, sampling evidence. I slapped the nearest mob and crunched them under my fist like cockroaches; the rest scuttled for safety. I hit the fire-extinguisher’s button and ice vapour roared across my bench as I sprayed over the desk, up the walls and around the ceiling.

  When I get angry, I get abrupt.
“Bleeder, sample GaZe. Check for system limpets.” I’d hate to open my shields to find Trojans in the system.

  Bleeder’s drives were howling through their tasks, but he still had time to tell me what to do. “Please activate Medusa, Jack.”

  Cursing at my own stupidity of going on-line without a security unit active, I tucked the fire extinguisher under one arm and scrambled to the window. As I reached for Medusa on the sill where she had been recharging, the sound-system kicked back in and some Stiff spoke to me through a remote host—I could hear the hiss. “If you’re the real Dayzen, then you lose. Either way, this’ll be a terminal job.” He didn’t bother to laugh at his pathetic pun and I didn’t bother to listen for it, I was already moving.

  I kicked the plaster out of the way and flicked the couch upright. A few dead bots dropped onto the floor and I crushed them under foot. The chair was unbalanced and most of the virtual leads had pulled out of their sockets, but none were damaged. GaZe—who rattled a little, but was otherwise fine—came on-line and again nagged me to fire up Medusa. Medusa pulsed with light and came alive at my touch. She growled into action. “My God, Jack, what have you been doing?”

  “Nothing you would be ashamed of, Medusa,” I tried to reassure her. “We’ve been hit by an Inquisitor.”

  “This was a hell of a hit, Jack. Stand clear of the extinguisher’s vapour and clip me to your waist. I’ll run a perimeter search.”

  I stepped back and waited while she ran through her charge. Blood began dripping down my face from a cut so I held a hand over it and waited for Medusa. I could’ve cursed myself to death.

  They say the morals of the world are changing. They say that all this free information at the fingertips of the greedy is changing the way we look at the world. They say the Cloud is causing the breakdown in society, that there is no morality anymore; we are forgetting who we are, what we are; we’ve become remote beings on a dying world. They say many things and like the missing laughter of the Stiff, I didn’t bother to listen to it. Sansan looked crippled, if not dead; Bleeder blinked his way through the clearing vapour and HaRf and GaZe hung from the table like a mangled arm. When Medusa gave me the all clear, I picked Sansan up, turned her over and did a visual on her. She lay in my hand with her chrome insignia blackened by the fusing circuits. Her drives, like stab marks in a corpse, dribble small particles of her entrails and her body was still warm. It was like holding a dead pet.

  I put her down reverently on the table, turned away and checked on the firewall. It was blown, completely useless. I didn’t have the heart to remove it—I let it slump there beside Sansan, nudged GaZe and HaRf back onto the table and checked Bleeder.

  He was unharmed. Because he looks just like a security badge they hadn’t even noticed him when they had run through the PAN. That was how I designed him. If ever a hacker found him on the PAN I would be amazed. If they could break into him, I’ll give up on this business, give all my worldly goods over to the Luddites and hang myself from the Harbour Bridge.

  He clicked through the last of his checks and gave me the results of his run.

  The Inquisitor had come from an outside source, running through a tap on the Needle, activating the little explosive buddies with orbital commands. He couldn’t tell me how they had got into the apartment, but I had an opinion on that already. I peeked out the window, but no delivery vehicles circled; the road was barren – only the naked guy on the roof had any sign of life. I looked at the mess the micros had made and began to get worried.

  Time to move.

  I hate to be without an IA for too long, so I cloned Sansan in under ten minutes from hardware I’d picked up a few months previously. I retrieved her personality and archives from storage and set her working a psy-match to check on my work. Medusa and Bleeder investigated possibilities of further waves or infestation, running habits for me while I cleaned myself up and bandaged my head. I’d just finished when GaZe gave me the news that the system was completely clean, but the scanner had picked up a BB squad dispatched to my locale. I had fifteen minutes at the tops. I popped a Dry into my mouth, let it pinch the adrenal flow a little tighter, delved into GaZe and had him searching for a safe-house without letting everyone know I’d been hit by an Inquisitor. After all, my reputation is my pay check.

  Medusa tuned her senses for seekers. Bleeder split another window and began researching the GriPpa – sourcing for the missing link of events that the Stiff had used to catch me. He sealed the Cloud a second after GaZe went out, began to work inwards, his memory spitting over faster than a cowboy with a cheek full of juice. I drummed my fingers and watched the clock tick through another second.

  Sansan was getting impatient. She gave me a nudge, got me moving again by replaying the message the Stiff had left. Her schematics matched up fine, so I let her cut a line through Bleeder and hook into the phone down the street for me and book a houseboat on the Murray from some old guy who ran rentals adds in the yellows and didn’t have much of a PAN. She had the super deliver a car to the side entrance while I threw a few clothes and supplies together and prepared for the arrival of the squad. I activated Harry, my poor attempt at a completely robotic entity, dressed him and gave him a random address in the Blue Mountains and sent him down to the car, to his doom. Hell, I didn’t care, as long as I survived the squad’s questions. I might be a Shiner, but being a Shiner would mean nothing to the squad. I’d be marked as a renegade even if I was in law enforcement. Shiners are not perfect.

  In the bathroom, I packed the shaving gear and the hand mirror into a small travel bag, took some of my favourite lotions and scented soaps, wrapped a towel around them and dropped the bundle into the bag. Even though I was in a hurry, I considered the first-aid kit carefully before I took it with me. A squad would question why I was carrying one when the world was safe and secure, but I took the chance. I didn’t know how dangerous this would get.

  The mirror above the sink was dirty and unused for some time, and I paused there and considered wiping a smear across the glass. I thought of dropping the holoface and looking for the cut in my head, and to look myself in the eye while I had the chance. It’s something you should do every now and then: look at your own self with a critical eye., but mirrors don’t show some crimes and it’s just a pity you can’t stand beside yourself and see the lines, the spots and blemishes, what you look like, what colour your eyes are, what colour hair you were born with. If you could see yourself as others see you as a poet once said, it puts many things into perspective, even if it is a little narcissistic.

  But I didn’t raise a hand and wipe the glass clean. My face wasn’t familiar anymore, and what I would see was just what the holoface was covering. That’s what makes the idea of having a remote face a little easier to understand. It’s not just a mask to hide behind, but a tool for showing others what you think of yourself. It’s just marketing.

  But I don’t need the holoface for marketing. I have a perfect face: square jawed, chiselled cheekbones, straight nose, olive skin and wide dark eyes. Beauty in itself. Maybe it’s a little vain to say that, but it’s something you will want to know. I don’t need a holoface, but I’m expected to wear one. I don’t need a Cameo on the Cloud to improve my personality either, but there’s one there when I need it.

  And besides, even if I did drop the holoface, I couldn’t see the cut in my forehead because it was on the top of my skull.

  Sansan interrupted with news of the squad. “Two minutes to squad arrival, Jack. Do you want full shutdown?”

  I hate being alone. “No, Sansan. GaZe, give me support and prep for fast departure. Medusa, are you listening?”

  “Of course, Jack.”

  “We’ll do this my way. No action unless full vocal alarm.”

  “Confirmed. You scream, we beam!” Her voice sounded sharper than the old Sansan did. She was primed for action. Good. I didn’t want any mistakes. This was going to be one hell of a performance. I checked the holoface readout. Perfect. A morph of Elvis
Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Playing favourites of the masses. Nothing unusual. There would be no need. I gave some thought to breaking the connection to the Cameo though. Cameos are remote personalities; a face away from yourself, if you know what I mean;, but that isn’t quite as good as having a whole new existence. Few people can handle the idea of dual existence, especially if the existence they’re leading is inferior to the Cameo. Jekyll and Hyde, I suppose. Sometimes a Cameo will give clues about a real personality that the Squads could use in a court of law, but I was quite certain it wouldn’t come down to that. I decided to leave the Cameo alone. They wouldn’t check that deep. It would spoil their fun.

  Bleeder gave me confusing signals. He could find no fault with my last work, nor any way the Stiff could’ve planted micros in my system. We hadn’t taken a delivery over the last week. I doubled all the safeties, had Medusa creating smoke while I planned a retreat.

  Retreating may seem like cowardice, but you haven’t been the target of the Squads. It’s common sense, not cowardice. Common sense comes from the European side of my family.

  “One minute, three seconds, Jack.” Sansan likes to keep things graphed, which can be annoying at times. Especially when it gets down to microseconds. I’d rather sit and sweat without having her remind me how much longer I’ve to sweat. It takes all the fun out of it. I thanked her and practised the walk I would have to use. Straight legs, little clicks at the knees when I put down each foot.

  “Fifty seconds, Jack.”

  “Thank you, Sansan.”